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Tesla Announces Home Battery System
An anonymous reader writes: Early this morning, Elon Musk finally revealed Tesla's plans for the home: battery systems designed to store up to 10 kWh of power. The company is leveraging the battery technology they've developed for their electric cars to enable more people to switch to renewable power for their homes. There will be two models of the battery. The 10 kWh version will cost $3,500, and the 7 kWh version will cost $3,000. They can deliver power at a continuous rate of 2kW, with peaks up to 3 kW. Crucially, the batteries will be warrantied for 10 years. Musk thinks the market for home batteries will expand to at least two billion, eventually. But even a much smaller uptake for now will validate the creation of Tesla's "gigafactory."
"The gigafactory is the recipient of the largest incentive package ever given by Nevada at $1.3 billion, which followed a hotly contested tax incentive bidding war between various states to land the Tesla battery plant. For the investment to pay off, Tesla needs to convince hundreds of thousands of consumers per year to buy its cars and battery products, with the gigafactory serving as a cornerstone to the company's sales strategy. ... An early gigafactory rendering released by Tesla stated that the plant will have an annual battery pack output of 50 gigawatt hours — the bulk of which will go toward batteries for cars with most of the remainder to be allocated for stationary batteries, according to figures mentioned by Tesla's chief technology JB Straubel last year. The gigafactory's sheer scope makes other battery products a possibility as well."
"The gigafactory is the recipient of the largest incentive package ever given by Nevada at $1.3 billion, which followed a hotly contested tax incentive bidding war between various states to land the Tesla battery plant. For the investment to pay off, Tesla needs to convince hundreds of thousands of consumers per year to buy its cars and battery products, with the gigafactory serving as a cornerstone to the company's sales strategy. ... An early gigafactory rendering released by Tesla stated that the plant will have an annual battery pack output of 50 gigawatt hours — the bulk of which will go toward batteries for cars with most of the remainder to be allocated for stationary batteries, according to figures mentioned by Tesla's chief technology JB Straubel last year. The gigafactory's sheer scope makes other battery products a possibility as well."
This battery could power a smaller sized home for a whole day. Kind of thing that can make solar energy viable.
Love him or loather him, but Musk is changing the world.
Great idea. My power supplier currently has rates based on TOU (Time Of Use - http://www.torontohydro.com/si...), and I'd love to be able to charge up the battery supply for my house overnight at cheap rates, then run off the battery the rest of the time.
I just hope it's not going to be one of those "Only available in the United States" deals.
kW is a unit of power. When you multiply it by a unit of time it becomes a unit of energy.
At the bottom of the
So if you turn on your stove and clothes dryer, your TV shuts off? It's like my college apartment all over again.
I'm reading the 10 kWh pack may be more like $4500 rather than $3500. I like that 10 year warranty though .. and you get whole-house surge protection of course, I'm sure.
If you put enough PV on your home, you can eliminate your electric bill. At which point, many utilities argue, the costs of maintaining the grid (that's rolled into your electric bill, but not as a separate line item) are covered by the less-wealthy. The poor are subsidizing the grid for the wealthy, they argue. And they argue, further, that they should be able to charge people who are using Net Metering even if they ARE producing as much power as they're consuming.
Where I live, I pay a monthly connection charge ( < $20 / month) + $0.085 / kWh. In short, my electrical co-op breaks these out as separate line items on the bill. Even if I put in enough PV to go Net Zero, so long as I'm connected to the grid, I'm at least paying the monthly connection charge. The Arizona utility wanted a connection charge / kWh installed PV, to the point that the homeowners who installed the PV ended up paying the same, without or without the PV. In short, they wanted to eliminate any incentive to add PV and connect to the grid. They did get approval for a connection charge / kWh installed, but it was a fraction of what they wanted.
In Hawaii, where power is routinely $0.39 / kWh (it's made, largely, from imported petroleum), solar PV and Net Metering are so widespread that entire neighborhoods are producing excess power during the height of the day. It's to the point where HECO gets to veto whether or not you can add PV to your home; you have to get permits from them and they're getting harder to acquire. Because the transformers which convert distributed power (typically lower frequency and higher voltage) to the household power (60 Hz / 240 VAC split-phase) are made to work efficiently, one-way. Going the other way, they are considerably less efficient. If you are a net producer and your neighbor is a larger, net consumer, you're supplying your neighbor and the local transformer simply converts less power going into that neighborhood. When the entire neighborhood is a net producer, the transformer has a problem. So they limit how much power can be produced in each neighborhood.
I used to think this was all about the power/utility companies trying to defend their bottom line. That's still part of it, but I've come to realize there are technical reasons, too. Installing efficient, bi-directional transformers would require:
at considerable expense. And that latter part, well, you KNOW they're not going to let their executives and/or shareholders eat that cost. And many utilities are regulated, such that they have to get approvals for rate increases. Which aren't easy to get. So there's technical reasons AND financial reasons for the utilities to grip.
Put a battery pack on your home, like one of these. Get an inverter which feeds excess to the battery and NEVER exports to the grid. The power company loses their only technical reason to gripe, because you are no longer doing Net Metering. At that point, it's all about the Benjamins.
Indeed, if you get to the point where your home is truly Net Zero, long-term, you can go completely off-grid. At which point they no longer have a say in the matter.
... by the Dew of Mountains the thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shakes, the shakes become a warning
It's about GBP30-40 for a 100Ah 12V car lead-acid battery on a random site. These are mass-produced, cheap and easily available. Granted that they are heavy and large, but... scaling up... that's 1.2KWh alone. We'd only need ten car batteries to match it. That's GBP300-400.
Why, then does it cost the equivalent of nearly $3,500 (GBP2200) for the same here?
Sure, we allow leeway for different voltages (necessary for high-current loads, etc.), different technologies, deep-cycle, etc. but... that's a five-to-seven-fold increase over what we're using now for quite basic solar, wind, etc. power storage and can be obtained from any garage. And 10 car batteries aren't prohibitively large, expensive, difficult to handle, etc.
With 10 year warranty and 2KW peaks? That's way within range of such a pack. Hell, stick a decent split charger / inverter on the end, one designed for home use, and it still comes nowhere near the price of this home battery.
Is my maths wrong? Have I missed something? Quite what are we trying to sell here apart from an overpriced battery and some electronics on either end of it?
A single unit does't need to power the entire home. You've got the grid for the rest. If you want to go off-grid, they're stackable up to nine units.
Steve Jobs merely made trinkets for douchebags with too much money.
Musk, as self-aggrandizing as he may be, at least is genuinely trying to make the world a slightly better place (while making a buck at the same time).
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I just did a price check and a 10kwh rolls royce deep cycle system with 4 of those batteries is about 1500 USD. Tesla wants 3000 to 3500. At that price, I could buy 20kwh to 30kwh in conventional lead acid batteries.
The primary advantage of the Lithium batteries is that they're light. But in a static location what is the point of them? Who cares how much the batteries weigh if they never get moved? They sit in a utility closet somewhere in your house and that's it. I'm really confused as to why anyone would pay DOUBLE for Teslas batteries?
Am I missing something? Why would I pay TWICE as much per kilowatt hour?
What is more, deep cycle lead acid batteries can be reconditioned giving them a second life. I don't think you can do that with lithium batteries.
Help me understand. This makes no sense to me.
Here is a link to what I'm looking at as competition:
http://www.wholesalesolar.com/...
How are the tesla batteries better than that for this application?
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
to power 2 600W HID lights bulbs to grow weed off the grid. The battery would pay for itself in one crop of 8-10 weeks.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
They have a different product for utilities that will have longer service life and be available in much larger blocks of 100kWh that can be tied together. They wouldn't be used to replace pumped-storage or the like, but to help smooth out power. One of the constant complaints of those against wind and solar (which can include the power companies themselves) is that the varying input from short-term fluctuations is too hard to handle. With banks of batteries like this, it alleviates much of that problem.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
We're power pigs at this house due to all the DVRs, computers, etc, something like 33kWh per day based on the month's total consumption.
With some extensive re-wiring of the power panel to move high-load devices (AC, washer/dryer, dishwasher, possibly even the gas furnace blower motor) to another panel, the 10kW unit MIGHT be useful to keep the fridge and lights going during a short-term power outage. Sadly I think the computers would have to get shut off to even get 12 hours out of it.
With the rewiring necessary, I'm not sure it's even cost competitive with a natural gas generator. 16kW units with automatic transfer switches are around $3600 and will run the entire house, including high power stuff, indefinitely.
Where I live, it's all kind of moot. I can count on one hand the number of outages we've had in the last 16 years on one hand and only one was long enough to even justify a trip to the dry ice store to keep the fridge from melting.
If it was even remotely more common (1-2 times per year, 24 hours) one of the Honda suitcase generators would probably be more effective just to keep the fridge going or maybe the gas furnace blower. Beyond that level of frequency or duration I think a natural gas generator would be useful.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
On the prior article before the announcement, I posted about the economics not being that compelling, using my own actual numbers for consumption and peak vs off-peak pricing. I also noted that in some states, CA in particular, when peak pricing is ~60% higher than where I live, that it could start to be somewhat attractive.
That was all based on the pre-announcement rumored price of $13,000 for 10KWh. At $3,500 for 10KWh, I'd be looking at a 4-year payback, or, in other words, about a 25%/year ROI. To be clear, that's without solar PV panels to generate electricity, that's strictly charging the battery during off-peak hours and then running the house on it during peak hours. (Quick calculation based on battery price alone; total installed system more likely to see 15%-20% ROI, but still, not bad.)
I had wondered what Musk was up to and if the rumors were correct. Because you can already buy a 10KWh nickel-iron battery system for $13,000, so it did raise the question of what was the point? Well, now we know the point--1/4 the cost of existing competitive systems.
One big question not answered by the linked article, is what technology is used and what's the depth of discharge without damaging the battery. With nickel-iron, you can discharge most of the charge safely. With lead-acid technologies, you can't go below about 70% without shortening the lifespan. So 10KWh can actually mean anything between 3KWh and 8KWh of usable power--a huge range. (Hey, maybe Tesla's going to be consumer-friendly here--maybe 10KWh means 10KWh of usable power... As this kind of thing becomes more common in the home, it would make sense to rate battery systems that way, to make direct comparisons easier...)
Not really.
A lease is nothing more than renting, which not only has to cover all the costs of the batteries, but also reasonable replacements over the life of the lease, plus people to manage the lease, plus some profit (usually).
Leasing doesn't make things more affordable (just the opposite). It just breaks it into monthly payments without needing a lump-sum, and takes the hassle off your hands. It's a big difference.
You have to compare sealed lead acid deep-cycle (SLA) batteries to the Tesla battery. The reason is standard car batteries can't be deep-cycled and the release hydrogen when charged (which could blow up an enclosed house). Cost-wise the Tesla battery is on-par with a good SLA setup while being smaller and lighter and a 10-year warranty. Right now it is a good deal. If the price drops significantly when the Gigafactory goes on-line it could be a game-changer.
If I'm a "wind/solar" or other non-24x7-generating company and I know what fraction of my customers have a several-hour-backup power supply, I can offer them lower rates in exchange for "turning them off" or even "buying electricity back from their batteries" in times of peak demand. This will let me offer services to more customers than I normally could handle.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
No, with Elon it's more of a religious thing.
Sort of like saying Mass.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
That helps someone with solar panels, but more exciting is that it helps everyone - just just people with their own energy sources.
These shift load on the system - they don't just make solar energy viable, they smooth out load on the power network, and make alternative energy sources that may not be reliable much more viable.
Not to mention suddenly everyone is much less dependent on reliable power, so it can eventually bring the possibility of reducing the extreme availably requirements of power - you could get a note saying power would be shut down ro an hour over the weekend, so they could do infrastructure changes.
At $3k it is a no-brainer to buy one of these.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What happens to these batteries at the end of the 10 year lifespan? Can they be repurposed? Are they recyclable? Do they use rare earths?